


no talons at his heels

by vegetas



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: M/M, oh these boys are GENTLE
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-16
Updated: 2019-04-16
Packaged: 2020-01-15 04:01:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18490909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vegetas/pseuds/vegetas
Summary: *scoops an extra helping of thomas jopson and edward little being each other's first proper loves onto your plate, lunch lady style*





	no talons at his heels

  

> For his teeth seem for laughing round an apple. 
> 
> There lurk no claws behind his fingers supple; 
> 
> And God will grow no talons at his heels, 
> 
> Nor antlers through the thickness of his curls.
> 
>  
> 
> arms and the boy / wilfred owen

 

“What were you like as a boy?”

  
Thomas asks this question in several iterations, posing them in such a way that Edward does not begin to suspect him for some time.

 

Their more confidential conversations are interspersed with long periods of dutiful silence, the tireless circling of rank, so it is easy to blame on Thomas merely forgetting.

 

“Quiet,” Edward supplies at first, and Thomas nods but says nothing more, absorbed with cowlick on the crown of Edward's head.

 

Slowly, over time, Edward begins to understand. 

 

Once, Edward came upon the great cabin looking for the Captain and found Jopson instead, looking after the crystal.

 

The arctic sun bearing down through the rimed illuminator was blue, and cold, and it glinted off of Thomas’ eyes till they were the same: glacial and pale. Thomas did not notice him at all, an unusual thing. He was busy tilting the half empty decanter in his hands, twisting it a bit, and Edward realized he was not looking at it at all but at the prisms dancing on the panels and the floorboards, a faint smile on his face. It was like coming upon a rare bird, and Edward, very good at being invisible, let him go on for several fascinated moments undisturbed.

 

Thomas is holding him up to the light, turning him this way and that, always sensing for the most revealing angle.

 

* * *

 

 

 _Tell me about being a young man_ , Thomas asks, sometime, when they are lying together. 

 

Edward has never had someone ask him so many questions on dull matters. Usually people want to hear about the blue pools in _Gozo_ or _Comino_ , or inquire about the taste of sweetsops (custardy). They do not care about where Edward parted his hair when he was a schoolboy, or what he received for his twentieth birthday, or what his favorite book is (Forkel's, albeit deficient, biography on Bach). 

 

Edward tries to be more thoughtful and other, less flattering, adjectives come to mind. He’s never been particularly afraid of being honest, but with Thomas he only wishes him to spare him any realizations later on.

 

 _Awkward._ Thomas cocks his head, squinting at the deprecation.

 

“If I was lonely I did not notice,” Edward says with a hapless shrug.

 

Thomas’ eyes glitter.

  
“That’s a keen look,” Edward observes. All around is very quiet, save for the grinding of ice and wind sawing away at the ship, and Thomas is stretched out like a cat on top of him, and twice as mellow. He’s even snuck a nip from the bottle Edward keeps closeted away (so cleverly hidden even Thomas does not know where he squirrels it when they are through).

  
  
Thomas’ mouth purses slightly and then he cannot keep himself from smiling wider, though he doesn’t show his teeth. His long fingers tip-toe up Edward’s sternum, leaping over his neck to pad on the cleft in his chin.

  
“I was thinking, _how many ladies have crossed the room to draw Edward Little’s eye_...”

 

He centers his thumb more, pressing as though to leave a print.

 

"Not any, I assure you,” Edward drawls, huffing. Thomas lays his chin on the back of the hand rubbing slightly in the thatch of his hair on his chest. “Or were you not listening?”

 

“That you _noticed_ ,” Thomas continues, worming his other hand down between them and inching forward to kiss him. He finds what he is looking for and smirks at the way Edward closes his eyes and breathes out. “If I were a lady - quite proper - I would look at you over the edge of my fan and I’d walk right across the room, so even _you_ would not miss me. I’d dip my glove in _Garofano_ and post it to you...”

 

“ _Quite_ proper, I reckon,” Edward whispers, palming the curve of Thomas’ ass where it meets his thigh. Thomas wrinkles his nose and rolls over, wedging between him and the berth. Edward follows, nosing at his neck, and Thomas sighs, draping his leg over Edward’s hip so that Edward can trail his hand along it. He’s come to love Thomas’ legs - they are fine and long and lean. “And you don’t post a glove, Tommy,” he continues, rubbing the flat of his palm along the ridge of muscle Thomas is flexing. “You’d send someone. Some friend of yours, to tell me a very silly lie about how you dropped it...”  

 

“Were you a rascal, Edward Little?” Thomas murmurs, arching his throat more against Edward’s mouth, shivering at the prickle of his whiskers. “ _I reckon_ you were, up in those hills and countryside,” he makes a distracted attempt at Edward’s accent and Edward squeezes his waist, fingers dragging against the thin bone winging from his pelvis, fucking into him while he is still loose and soft and knows his shape so well.

 

“Well fed and handsome as the devil -,” Thomas teases, exhaling long and slow, using his splayed hand against the wall to push back a bit more, hips canting up and then down again smoothly with the leverage. The hand Edward is not keeping on his hip strums over his stomach and up the harp strings of his ribs till it’s cradling his jaw.

 

“I’d fair poorly beside you,” Edward admonishes, kissing behind his ear, and Thomas’ chest stutters with a laugh which bleeds into the softest moan.

 

“I never had much luck with girls,” Thomas says, recovering his senses briefly. “I believe -,” he pauses, biting his lip, grinding down against Edward with a bit more intention. “They could sense how inattentive I was…”

 

“Thomas Jopson, inattentive?” Edward grunts, brow furrowing with concentration. Thomas squirms slightly, adjusting to nestle Edward’s cock against the spot that makes him clench his fist against the wall.

 

“Oh,” he exclaims, but softly, and Edward smiles against him. “There was always so much _work_ ,” his eyes screw closed, head tipping backwards and rolling gently on the curve of Edward’s shoulder. “No time for passions, I’m afraid.”

 

Edward licks and nips gently at his neck, worrying him like a dog with a bone. _Work_. Thomas hurrying after school masters and pestering his neighbors for odd jobs. The green grocer, the butcher, the dairy; ones who certainly still remember Thomas Jopson as a good lad on bad days. Men, by his own admittance, he knew he could charm favors from if he needed to - a bit more on the end of the joint of mutton, or an extra turnip slipped into his basket on market day when his purse strings were tight.

 

Thomas is friendlier with hunger than Edward is. He smiles at Edward’s stories of Sunday suppers  like he wants to fit his own teeth around it.

 

Edward has to wonder if there was something else stirring when he trotted after those men and if they, too, could sense Thomas’ mouth was softer and tamer than any spaniel’s. How well it could fetch for them, dropping prizes at their feet without a single blemish.

 

“Thomas Jopson is no one’s sweetheart?” Edward asks, and Thomas answers with quiet, caught in an exceptional moment of shyness. “I am not stealing him away?” Edward feels the heat of his face where it’s tucked against his own cheek and the flutter of his heart through his thin back. Thomas shakes his head back and forth, slowly.

 

“None but my own, then?” Edward furthers, wrapping his arms around him and shifting them so that Thomas is curled underneath him, Edward’s knees nudging his thighs more apart.

 

Thomas clasps their hands together in a knot, squeezing in time with Edward’s thrusts.

 

“Am I?” Thomas asks, the words thin and breathy on Edward’s ear and incredulous. “Edward Little’s -,” he stammers, kissing the back of his knuckles.

 

“Yes,” Edward says, knowing to cover Thomas’ mouth so that he does not whimper so loudly. _My sweetheart_ . _My Valentine -_. Thomas hears him and pants against Edward’s palm, gripping his wrist tightly as Edward rocks so slowly against him.

 

“What an angel you must have made, Tom,” Edward continues. “I’d have prayed for the courage to speak to something so pretty.”

 

Thomas nuzzles against his hand. 

  
  
“I would want to say such things in your ear,” Edward groans, curling over him more. "It'd drive me to distraction."

 

“Won’t you, now?” Thomas whispers, with unmistakable longing. “Now, like you’re a young man, and you love me...” 

 

When Thomas turns his head to the side to look at him light breaks apart within his eyes and Edward sees a spring thaw, hidden flecks of yellow jonquils pressing through the snow; young, tender, green budding through the pale blue ice.

**Author's Note:**

> sometimes i just wanna write some NICE TENDER BOYS. so that's what you're getting. also "arms and the boy" is one of my all time faves so what can you do.
> 
> unbeta'd as usual, i live and die by my own sword ; forgive any inaccuracies and suspend any and all disbelief ;v;


End file.
